NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – Most husbands, when they're sent to sleep in the guest room, are in trouble. For John Carmack, it's a reward.

The video game industry's premier coding maestro (and the mind behind some of its most visually spectacular games, including the recently released "Doom 3") became a father for the first time last month. Typically, that means a lot of sleepless nights. Carmack, though, can't function like that.

"I've never been one of those programmers that works effectively on short amounts of sleep," he said. "I've always needed eight hours."